complete a raid without addons?

[Peter T.]

I'm looking at all my addons I use with my mage. Deadly Boss Mods,
Power Auras, GTFO, Mage Nuggets, Parrot, Arcanometer, TidyPlates etc..
I have a lot of addons incl. the boss specific addons for bosses like
Malkorok. Its all about numbers, visual cooldowns, countdowns and timing.

Is it possible to complete an unknown raid instance with a classic GUI
and no third-part addons at all?

[John Gordon]

Post by Peter T.
Is it possible to complete an unknown raid instance with a classic GUI
and no third-part addons at all?

Possible, sure. But for the average raider it would be a lot harder.

("unknown" as in random, or as in never-seen-before?)

[Lewis]

Post by Peter T.
I'm looking at all my addons I use with my mage. Deadly Boss Mods,
Power Auras, GTFO, Mage Nuggets, Parrot, Arcanometer, TidyPlates etc..
I have a lot of addons incl. the boss specific addons for bosses like
Malkorok. Its all about numbers, visual cooldowns, countdowns and timing.
Is it possible to complete an unknown raid instance with a classic GUI
and no third-part addons at all?

Possible? Sure, it's POSSIBLE.

Not bloody likely.

[Catriona R]

Post by Peter T.
I'm looking at all my addons I use with my mage. Deadly Boss Mods,
Power Auras, GTFO, Mage Nuggets, Parrot, Arcanometer, TidyPlates etc..
I have a lot of addons incl. the boss specific addons for bosses like
Malkorok. Its all about numbers, visual cooldowns, countdowns and timing.
Is it possible to complete an unknown raid instance with a classic GUI
and no third-part addons at all?

In the olden days it was, as least as a player not a leader: I did
Onyxia/ZG with no combat addons, and Kara/ZA with only CT Raid_Assist
or whatever its name was (raidframe addon), even that wasn't needed
for a non-healer. Nowadays, it depends how dependent you are on them.
I couldn't heal without addons, I've got too used to VuhDo (I'm not
trying any 5-mans on WoD beta because of that, I just know I'd screw
up constantly without having my spells bound and clear raidframes), I
could probably dps, but ideally I'd want DBM or similar for warnings
of nasty stuff about to happen.

I don't use many other addons which directly influence combat, the
default UI does most things fine, but some classes have quirks which
make addons very useful: shaman totems without an addon are just a
total nightmare (I'm playing a shaman on beta, and argh, too many
buttons, can't keep track at all), and feral druid/rogue are hard to
keep track of dots/buffs without an addon which puts both in one
place. I could do without those if I had to, but it's certainly easier
with them.

[t***@thsu.org]

Post by Peter T.
Is it possible to complete an unknown raid instance with a classic GUI
and no third-part addons at all?

Yes. My guild used to do it all the time, as we consistently outran the DBM developers. Which meant that you might as well uninstall DBM and related boss mods.

Although it was still common to use a better raid frame GUI, particularly for healers, but even then, we'd deal without, especially after updates, when mods became buggy for a good week.

The trick is ventrilo, raid symbols, and watchmen. Your watchmen, usually veteran dps players, have the assignment to look for raid wide death situations and call them out over ventrillo.

There is always some type of tell or animation that precedes a raid wide death situation; these things don't just appear out of nowhere. That is, if the dragon is about to breath fire, you'll see him inhale. If a pool of acid appears on the ground, you'll see a giant green ball get lobbed towards the ground.

As for the raid symbols, put them on the watchmen. Thus, if you see a watchman's symbol move, it means follow him or scatter, as something's about to happen, and it typically precedes the voice warnings over ventrillo by a half second.

For healers, the trick to using the standard raid UI (and this is the same trick for using addon UIs too), is to put the raid UI right under your toon's feet, and turn on only buffs/debuffs that you personally have to deal with during the fight. That way you can see the fight, see if you're standing in fire, and aren't distracted by non-combat/non-curable buffs/debuffs.